CHAPTER
2

Interpreting Your Thoughts and Feelings

In This Chapter

• How your thoughts influence your feelings
• Distinguishing between emotions and thoughts
• Becoming aware of unhealthy thought patterns
• Stopping to question and challenge your thoughts

Are your thoughts a result of your feelings? Or are your feelings a result of your thoughts? It is important to understand not only which causes which, but also how to separate your thoughts from your feelings. In Chapter 1, you learned how your thoughts cause feelings and behaviors. In this chapter, you’ll learn how feelings sometimes lead to unhealthy thought patterns. The exercises will help you move from reasoning based on your feelings to reasoning based on your thoughts. We’ll look at some common unhealthy thought patterns and provide strategies for beginning to look at situations in your life in a more helpful way.

Thoughts, Feelings, and Behaviors

Thoughts, feelings, and behaviors work together in a continuous cycle. First, you have a thought, which influences how you feel and behave. You then have thoughts about those feelings and actions, which influence how you think and behave. The cycle continues, repeating itself over and over. It can be positive or negative, depending on your thoughts.

Imagine you are at a party where you don’t know anyone. As you make your way around the room, you spot a familiar face but cannot recall the person’s name. You recognize her as someone who used to sit near you to at work, but you haven’t seen her since she left the company a few years back. You start to feel nervous. You think, “I’m embarrassed that I don’t remember her name. I should avoid her; I’m too nervous to chat with her.” As you walk away, you validate your actions thinking, “We were never friends to begin with; why waste my time?” You feel a sense of relief.

You might believe you felt nervous because you couldn’t remember your co-worker’s name and that you walked away because you felt nervous. However, it was not the situation that caused your feelings, and it was not your feelings that caused you to walk away. It was your perception of the situation that caused you to walk away.

The thoughts might have come so quickly that you were unaware of them until you felt nervous, but they were present the entire time.

Maybe you were so focused on the feeling of nervousness that you did not notice your immediate thoughts. You may have thought the following:

• I should only approach people I know well.
• It’s pretty pathetic that I can’t remember her name.
• I should have kept in touch.
• People I don’t know well are intimidating.
• She is very well-dressed and will judge me.

These thoughts created a feeling of anxiousness. It is that feeling you acted on—avoiding the person for the rest of the night so you wouldn’t feel uncomfortable. This anxious feeling also influenced your thoughts for the remainder of the party. You became self-conscious and worried you were underdressed. You thought others would notice your discomfort and felt that you didn’t belong at the party. These new thoughts brought about new feelings of despair. You left the party feeling like a failure.

In this example, you allowed your emotions to control your thoughts and therefore control your actions. Your reasoning and self-talk revolved around how you felt, not the facts of the situation. When you make a conscious decision to change your self-talk into a more positive view of the situation, you change how you respond.

DEFINITION

Self-talk is running commentary in your mind. It is the voice in your head, your internal dialogue, that reflects and interprets the world around you. Self-talk can be positive or negative.

Using the ABC chart described in Chapter 1, the party scenario looks like this.

From this table, you see that your original thoughts and feelings led to a new activating event and therefore a new set of feelings and behaviors. By stopping, examining your thoughts, and coming up with alternative beliefs, you change your perception of the situation and your behaviors.

Using your ABC chart, add two additional columns:

D: New Beliefs

E: New Consequences

Your new beliefs are ways of combating your immediate reaction. It takes practice to notice these thoughts, analyze them, and come up with a more helpful and healthy way of looking at the situation. The following table gives you examples of new, alternative thoughts and how your behaviors change once you look at the situation with a new perspective.

Your Turn: New Beliefs

In Chapter 1, you began an ABC chart listing some of your worries. Use this chart and add columns D (New Beliefs) and E (New Consequences). Try to come up with new ways of looking at the situation and imagine how your behavior changes when you have this new perspective.

GIVE IT A TRY

Over the next week, keep track of when you feel stressed or upset. Complete the ABCDE chart, trying to come up with alternative or new beliefs and think about what new consequences could occur.

Completing this exercise helps open your mind to new beliefs, or at least the possibility of new beliefs. In the beginning, you might not believe all the new beliefs you write down. That’s okay. Work on carrying out the new behaviors, even when you don’t believe the beliefs behind them. As you do, you begin to accept the beliefs.

Separating Thoughts from Emotions

By now, you should understand that it is your thoughts that drive your emotions and by changing what you think, you can change your emotions. You can make a conscious decision to review your thoughts and agree or disagree with them. You can make a conscious decision to change them.

There might be times you find separating your thoughts from your emotions is difficult and confusing. It is often helpful to work backward. First, consider how you are feeling and then think about what happened, the triggering event or situation, to make you feel that way. Then focus on the thoughts. For example, “I’m feeling hurt and angry. Brian said he would call at 7 P.M. and he didn’t call.” You identified your feelings and the triggering event.

Now, you can consider the thoughts you had as a result of the triggering event. You may have thought, “I am not important to Brian.” Try changing this thought to, “I know I am important to Brian. Something must have come up. I’m sure he’ll call when he has a chance,” or “I know I matter to Brian and although I’d like him to call I don’t really need to talk to him right now.” Immediately, your emotions change. You are no longer angry or hurt. Instead, you are calm and confident in your relationship.

Believing your new thoughts isn’t always easy. You might think, “Maybe something came up… or maybe it didn’t. Maybe he just doesn’t care.” When you find yourself reverting back to your negative thoughts, practice sitting with your new thought. Close your eyes. Silently repeat the new thought while resisting the old thought. Every time your mind returns to the old thought, repeat the new thought and resist dwelling on the old thought.

We often place the blame for our feelings on someone or something else. You might say, “Brian made me mad because he didn’t call when he said he would.” It is not Brian who made you mad; it is your perception—Brian doesn’t care—that caused you to be hurt and angry. Learning to separate your thoughts and emotions gives you control of how you feel and react to a situation.

Mixing up emotions and thoughts leads to a cycle of negative thinking. Once you begin thinking, “I’m not important to Brian,” you start thinking of events to justify this belief. You interpret past events through this lens, even if it isn’t true. You think about last week when he brushed you off because he was on a business call. You think about the time last month when he didn’t listen to your point of view. By the time Brian does call, you are sure the relationship is doomed because he simply doesn’t care. Instead of separating your thoughts and emotions, you have allowed your emotions to drive your thoughts.

Another common example of a negative, emotion-driven thought process is avoidance. Typically, the more you avoid something, the more you fear it. Imagine you have a fear of flying. The more you avoid getting on a plane, the more your fear grows. You might believe that it is necessary for you to avoid flying because you can’t manage the uncomfortable feeling that comes along when you fly. Using the ABC method, the following shows how negative thinking can lead to more negative thinking:

A: I have to get on an airplane.

B: It’s uncomfortable to fly. I can’t handle the discomfort of flying.

C: Avoid the flight. Relief.

Because avoiding the flight brought relief, you’ve internalized more negative thinking:

B: I always need to avoid uncomfortable situations.

C: Embarrassment. There is something wrong with me. I can never fly again.

Now, imagine you make decisions based on your thoughts instead of allowing your emotions to control both your thoughts and actions:

Original B: It’s uncomfortable to fly. I can’t handle the discomfort of flying.

Alternative B: I can handle the discomfort. Other people are also uncomfortable on the airplane. I can do deep breathing on the plane or read my book.

Original B: I always need to avoid uncomfortable situations.

Alternative B: The more I fly the easier it will get. I can overcome my discomforts.

As you see, negative thinking usually causes more negative thinking. It becomes a cycle; you think a negative thought and feel and react in a negative way, which causes you to be in a bad mood, which causes more bad thoughts, which worsens your mood, which causes even more negative thoughts. The following section looks at some common negative thinking patterns and questions you can ask yourself to combat these thought processes.

Problematic Thinking Patterns

If you think something often enough, you believe it is true. If you think in the same way often enough, it becomes a habit, even if it is unhelpful thinking. We use cognitive distortions to convince us of something that isn’t true or to justify our feelings and actions. For example, if you tell yourself that you fail every time you try something new because you are not the best, you justify not trying new things. This is seeing things in absolutes—one type of problematic thought patterns. There are a number of different types of cognitive distortions.

DEFINITION

Cognitive distortions are biased habits in the way you think. They cause overly rigid and negative thoughts. It’s like wearing rose colored glasses and assuming everything is a shade of pink.

Catastrophizing

When you catastrophize, you magnify every problem and assume everything is going to end in a large, negative disaster. You believe your imagined outcome is a given, that the only way the situation ends will be terrible. You fail to take steps to prevent the problem; after all, it’s already set in stone.

Examples:

• You have a fight with your boyfriend and assume you are going to break up.
• You make a small mistake at work and think you are going to get fired.

Questions to ask yourself:

• What evidence do I have to prove or disprove my conclusion?
• How likely is this to happen?
• What are other possible outcomes?

CBTIDBIT

Think about a small problem in your life, such as not finding a parking space at the mall. Consider this a “1.” Now think about the worst possible situation that could happen in your life, for example losing your home in a fire. This is a “10.” Whenever you encounter a problem, give it a rating somewhere in between these two scenarios based on how much it would disrupt your life. This helps you put situations in perspective.

Mind Reading

When you engage in mind reading, you guess what other people are thinking and assume it is true. You automatically assume others have a negative opinion of you and become angry, anxious, or depressed because of these assumptions. You act as though your ideas are correct without reality testing.

Examples:

• You see some people whispering and assuming they are talking about you. You tell them off, giving them a reason not to like you.
• You see someone on the street that you recently met and he ignores you. You assume he doesn’t like you and doesn’t want to talk to you. You stop trying to make friends.

Questions to ask yourself:

• What are some alternative explanations?
• How can I test my guess?

Fortune-Telling

Fortune-telling is a thought pattern in which you make predictions about the future, often with a negative outcome, and feel discouraged or behave based on a reality that hasn’t yet happened and may never happen.

Examples:

• You want to ask a girl out and assume she will say no. You don’t bother.
• Your boss calls you to “talk about the last project.” You assume he is angry at you. You avoid the conversation.

Questions to ask yourself:

• What would happen if I take the risk and do it anyway?
• What else might happen?
• If the negative does happen, what steps can I take to deal with it?

IMAGINE THAT

Optimists use cognitive distortions to their benefit—they believe positive events occurred because of them and that any positive event is proof that more good things will happen. They see negative events as limited to specific situations and attribute problems to external events. They focus on where they have control and assume they can make things right in the future. For example, an optimist sees getting a promotion as proof of their hard work and expects more promotions will occur in the future. An optimist sees not getting a promotion as perhaps a limit of the company’s resources. So they continue to work just as hard being hopeful that their promotion will come.

Black-and-White Thinking

When you think in terms of black and white, you categorize outcomes and assume things will either be good or bad. Your bad category is large and includes most outcomes and your good outcomes are limited.

Examples:

• Your daughter applies to 10 colleges but has her heart set on one in particular. You assume any school other than her first choice will be socially and scholastically awful for her.
• You try a new sport and when you are not the fastest, you think you are a failure. You stop playing so you never get better.
• Your friend does not invite you somewhere and you think he is not a good friend. You stop calling him.

Questions to ask yourself:

• Is there some middle ground I am ignoring?
• Am I imposing superhuman qualities on myself?
• What is the evidence for and against this thinking?

Overgeneralizing

When you overgeneralize, you assume that what happened once will always happen, and something that didn’t happen will never happen. You see problems as never-ending and hopeless. You use the words “always” or “never” to describe specific situations. You ignore exceptions and focus on global results. You assume that because a situation ended poorly in the past, it will always end that way.

Examples:

• You think, “I always mess up.”
• You think, “I can’t trust anyone.”
• You didn’t get the promotion you wanted and now believe you will never get promoted. You stop working hard.
• You get blown off by a date and assume you will be alone forever. You stop going on dates.

Questions to ask yourself:

• Am I attributing too much importance to a one-time event? Can I focus on this as a specific incident?
• Are there parts that I can control in the future? Are there past events that I am ignoring?
• Do I need everything to go my way? Do I need everyone to like me?

STOP AND THINK

Success comes from investing in a situation even if it is not ideal. By assuming the ship that sailed without you was the only and best just leaves you stranded. Think about one time you did not get exactly what you wanted in life. Did you stop there and assume there were no other options? Or did you continue on and look for something equally good or better?

Personalization and Blame

Thought patterns of personalization and blame happen when you take responsibility for events out of your control or blame others for events in their control. You make things that have nothing to do with you about you.

Examples:

• The taxi driver goes down a street where there is a detour. You assume he is trying to take advantage of you rather than thinking he was not informed.
• You make plans with a friend and then have to cancel. He sounds disappointed. You assume he is mad at you rather than thinking he is just disappointed he cannot see you.
• Your husband forgets your anniversary. You think he has done it on purpose because you forget to celebrate his promotion rather than thinking, “We are both forgetful people, especially when it comes to these types of events.”

Questions to ask yourself:

• What are the other factors that contributed to the situation?
• Which factors of a situation are your responsibility? Where do you have control?
• If someone else is angry or upset, are they upset with you or with the situation?

Ignoring the Positive

When you ignore the positive, you always look at the negative aspects of a situation. You discredit any positive information and turn it around to be negative. You filter information and use only the information that supports your negative view. You believe life is unfair.

Examples:

• A date blows you off; you assume he was the “one” and don’t consider that he may not have been right for you.
• You don’t get a job; you assume it was the perfect position and forget that maybe another job is a better fit.
• A co-worker asks if you want to go to lunch; you assume she asked only because no one else was around.
• A friend asks you for a favor; you think, “Now I know why we are really friends.”

Questions to ask yourself:

• What are the positive elements to the situation?
• What information are you forgetting?

IMAGINE THAT

According to the American Psychological Association, people who see the glass as “half full” are healthier. They live longer, have lower rates of depression, don’t catch colds as often, have a reduced risk of dying from cardiovascular disease, and rate their emotional well-being higher than those who have a negative view of life.

“Should” and “Must”

When you think in absolutes, you have strong beliefs and rules about how other people should act and become angry when they don’t act in that way. You make demands on the behavior of others. You use “should” statements on yourself, “I should have done that,” and feel guilty for what you did or didn’t do.

Examples:

• You see someone at a party whom you don’t know very well and avoid talking to him or her. You think, “I should only approach people I know well.”
• A cashier is rude to you and you become angry because you were not treated with respect. You think, “People must treat me with respect.”
• You are mad at yourself because you can’t find your keys and you know you should have put them on the key hook. You think, “I should always be responsible.”
• A friend cancels plans and you assume you’re not important to him or her. You feel disappointed. You think, “People who care about me should honor their commitments.”

Questions to ask yourself:

• Are there exceptions to your rules? What are the circumstances that cause the flexibility?
• What are reasons why others may live by other rules?
• Does this person have different beliefs or priority that compete with my ideas of how they should and must be have?

Emotional Reasoning

When you use emotional reasoning, you base conclusions about yourself, others, and the world around on your feelings. You assume that if you feel something, it must be true.

Examples:

• I see someone well-dressed at a party. I feel intimidated so I assume he or she is intimidating.
• I feel nervous about getting on airplane. I assume my nervousness is a sign of danger.
• I make a mistake at work. I feel embarrassment. I assume others are judging me and saying I am responsible.

Questions to ask yourself:

• What are the thoughts behind me feeling? Can I restructure them?
• Can I focus on the facts not the emotions?

CBTIDBIT

Distorted thinking easily causes you to categorize requests about your behavior or the behavior of others as demands rather than a statement of preference or desire. This causes unnecessary defensiveness and negative emotions. Over the next week, practice viewing all requests as statements of preference rather than impositions.

Labeling

When you engage in labeling, you label your own behavior and the behavior of others in a negative way, such as “I am so stupid” and “He is lazy.”

Examples:

• Your brother-in-law is having a hard time finding a job; you think he is lazy and no good.
• You made a mistake at work; you believe you are loser.

Questions to ask yourself:

• How can I state this by focusing on specific actions without making personal attacks?
• What positive traits in myself and others can I focus on?

Your Turn: Notice Your Thoughts

Use the ABC worksheet introduced in Chapter 1. See if you can spot the distortion type for each thought or sets of thoughts. Don’t worry about doing it right or wrong. The point is to begin to develop awareness of your biases in thinking and notice your habits.

Situation: I see someone at party I am slightly familiar with. I cannot recall her name. She is well dressed.

Thought: “I should only approach people whom I know well.”
Distortion: “Should” statement. I’m applying an internal rule that limits my behavior.

Thought: “It’s pretty pathetic of me that I can’t recall her name. I should have kept better in touch.”
Distortion: Personalization (self-blame) and labeling. I’m making it all my fault. I’m calling myself names that are not motivating.

Thought: “People I don’t know well are intimidating.”
Distortion: Emotional reasoning. I feel intimated and I am drawing conclusions from my feelings.

Thought: “She is very well-dressed and will judge me.”
Distortion: Mind reading. I am assuming she will judge me harshly. I have no evidence of this. I can’t get inside her head.

When you first start CBT and begin working on the exercises in the book, it may not be possible to sit down and work through your thoughts on paper. You also might not yet be able to catch your negative thought patterns and work through the process in your mind. Take time after the situation to write down what you thought and what you might have changed during the situation. Keep at it. With continued practice, you will begin to catch and change your thoughts immediately.

The Least You Need to Know

• Your thoughts influence your feelings and behaviors.
• Work backward to separate your thoughts from emotions. Think about how you are feeling, what happened, and then what you were thinking during the situation.
• There are many different problematic thinking processes. When you become aware of your thinking patterns, you can correct them to think in a more helpful way.
• Practice noticing your thoughts. Try to identify what thought patterns are at work. Ask yourself questions to counteract those thought patterns.